Obamacare Exchange Premiums Increasing by 21.4% in Georgia

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia’s premiums on the state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange will increase by an average of 21.4% in 2017, according to a proposal accepted by the office of Insurance Commisioner Ralph Hudgens. The decision awaits final confirmation by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which has the ultimate authority to approve rate hikes on state insurance exchanges.

The hefty price increase was revised upward from 15.1% after Aetna, one of the nation’s five largest insurers, announced it was pulling out of 11 state insurance exchanges, including Georgia’s. Aetna will operate in just four states’ exchanges, following similiar pull-outs from insurance giants United Healthcare and Humana. Aetna lost 300 million pretax dollars servicing state exchanges last year.

This leaves Blue Cross and Blue Shield, already known for its fearsome political power, as the only company to offer health exchange plans in each of Georgia’s 159 counties. With the departure of Aetna from Georgia’s health exchange, BCBS is expected to gain major market share from the 70,000-90,000 Aetna members who will need to find new insurance.

Analysis from Avalare, a health insurance consulting company, finds that 36% of American counties will have one or zero exchange options in 2017. This sharp decline in competition is focused in rural places like South Georgia, where hospitals are already strained to the breaking point. In Alabama, Blue Cross and Blue Shield will be the only exchange carrier in each county, while Pinal County, Arizona, made news as the first county with no health exchange carriers.

In large part, the costs stem from fewer new enrollees than originally estimated. While the Congressional Budget Office expected 21 million customers on state health exchanges in 2016, only 10 million had registered as of March. Those 10 million health exchange members tend to have higher healthcare costs than the average population, overwhelming the narrow healthcare networks sold on the exchanges.

Other health exchange carriers have been approved to raise average health exchange premiums in 2017, including a 67.5% jump from Humana. All approved premium hikes can be found here.

The burgeoning crisis will be a focal point of politics in 2017, but are likely to aid opposite political forces on the state and federal level. Expect Congressional Republicans to renew calls to reform Obamacare, while General Assembly Democrats are likely to advocate louder for Medicaid expansion. As always in health care politics, if you like your talking points, you can keep your talking points.

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Chet Martin

The government has screwed up the health insurance market over the past few decades and is now nearly $20 trillion in debt. Let’s put them in charge of everyone’s health insurance so that we can wait in line for health care and go even farther into debt. What could go wrong?

This has been the strategy of the left for decades. Screw with the health insurance market place so that premiums increase and then just call for single payer becasue they screwed the health insurance market place.

H.R. 2300 The Empowering Patients First Act. Here is a section by section breakdown of the bill. Dr. Price has been working on this alternative for years. It would be nice if republicans in congress would get behind it, but often times in our party we have people that are just against things and not actually for solutions. This is an actual solution to our problem.

So it would appear Dr. Price is pitching tax-credits for premiums (regardless of what the insurance companies decide to do), portability, no abortion funding, block state grants, mysterious cost-tribunals, and more and more increasingly complex measures to patch the broken system. While I’m happy to see something presented, it doesn’t appear to be a whole host of new ideas and doesn’t seem to address costs so much as it will be yet another give-away to insurance companies.

I always like to view any issue through the prism of incentives. Our current structure contains three major players and one auxiliary player. The Employer, The Insurance Company, and The Government on the major side, and the Provider on the auxiliary side.

The question regarding healthcare should be simple. Of the three major players, (employer, insurer, government) who benefits the most if you live?

August 25, 2016 10:05 AM

The Eiger

I believe we have been looking at health care wrong for quite sometime. Liberals believe that health care costs are too high so the government should just pay for it. Many republicans believe that health care costs are too high and tort reform and health savings accounts will fix everything. Both are wrong.

You mention in you post that there are three major players (employer, insurer and the government) and I don’t disagree with that. But why is the patient never mentioned? The patient and doctor providing the care should be at the center of health care, but they aren’t becasue of a third party is always in the way. That third party is either a private insurer or the government. Right now insurance companies answer to the government or an HR person that negotiates a companies insurance plans.

There are a few people who will say that the United States has terrible health care. That is just flat out stupid. We do have a problem with rising cost of health insurance, but not the actual care itself. We should not be getting in the way of allowing doctors to take care of people, but we should be making it so that insurers answer to patients and not the other way around. That is what Dr. Price’s bill tries to do. It makes it easier to move in and out of the health insurance market place. Making it easier to leave a plan means that insurers will need to be more aware of the needs of the individual and not the HR rep.

The biggest issue we face is that battle lines have been drawn on both sides on this issue. No one is willing to cross that line to even have a discussion about what is best for patients. Competition is great, but there is no such thing as competition when you only have three or four major providers who have chopped up the nation into their own little monopoly regions.

Forcing insurance providers to actually compete is the solution to driving down health insurance costs. Handing this problem over to a government that seems unable to walk and chew gum at the same time would be an absolute disaster.

August 25, 2016 10:31 AM

Jack Fitz

The government that seems unable to walk and chew gum at the same time is the same one that provides the security and military to keep us all safe. I don’t see the calls for setting up private security contractors to take over military operations from the armed services groups.

August 25, 2016 11:34 AM

The Eiger

Of course the military does a great job of keeping us safe. They keep us all safe in the same way that doctors provide some of the world’s best health care right here in the United States. But just like the cost of health care is too high the cost of our military is very high as well. Why? Is it becasue the generals on the ground are wasting money? Or is becasue the federal bureaucracy and legislators have enabled and forced both the military and health care costs to spiral out of control?

Why did we need two different jet engines for the F-22 raptor? We didn’t, but congress had money to spend so that’s what the spent it on. The Pentagon didn’t want it. Just like there are things in the health care market place that certain individuals don’t need, but the government has mandated. A twenty seven year old unmarried male having mammogram coverage or a sixty year widow with prostate exam coverage. Those are wasted health care dollars. Wasted because the government has decided what everyone needs and what everyone needs isn’t always the same.

The government is great at many things, but what they are the greatest at is wasting taxpayer dollars. Having the government run a single payer system would be disastrous to the quality of care currently being provided here in the United States and would drive us further into debt.

If you want to know what the USA would look like under a single payer system look to the VA. They are on the cutting edge on a few things (like prosthetic limbs and PTSD), but for the most part they are terrible at providing our service men and women with quality care. The VA gives you the right to wait in line for what is not always the best quality care in our country. Ask anyone who goes the VA regularly for simple issues or medication and they will all say they love it. Ask that person when they had to wait in line for a life saving heart surgery or knee replacement what they think.

August 25, 2016 12:14 PM

LoyaltyIsMyHonor

Apparently you’re not familiar with concurrency as it relates to adopting new military platforms such as the F-35 (which will someday be an excellent aircraft) and the Ford Class aircraft carrier (which will someday be an excellent carrier).

August 25, 2016 1:14 PM

The Eiger

I’m well aware of the concurrency process as well as the procurement process and how it affects the companies that develop our newest technologies. The process of developing the two engines continued well beyond what was needed becasue Congress kept sinking money into it and not becasue the Pratt & Whitney engines were inferior.

I’m also aware that Congress screws with that process everyday by not making payments on time becasue of government shutdowns and their failure to pass appropriations bills. They screw with that process by adding bells, whistles and second engines to a project that was already years behind. Not because of Lockheed but because of the government. You are right that the F-35 will be an excellent aircraft. The F-22 is and would continue to have been one as well if congress had not slowed the development process down.

While we are on the topic of air frames and how Congress can screw with things in any number of ways we can talk about the A-10 Warthog. The A-10 is arguably one of the most successful and long lasting air frames. Before the war in Iraq and Afghanistan Congress was getting ready to mothball the A-10 much like they are discussing now. The generals don’t want this, but Congress does. More men and women have been saved in combat due to the A-10 than any of us will ever know. It’s ugly. It’s slow. It’s not sexy like the F-35, but it has been around since the 80’s and should be here for a lot longer. But it’s in danger not becasue of the Pentagon, but because of Congress and their shortsightedness.

All of this comes back to my original argument dealing with health care. There are a lot of really good individuals in Congress, but as a whole Congress wastes money, wastes time and muddies the water in areas they have no business being. Such as health care and the development of new technologies. Congress was developed as a body for oversight. That is what they should do. Oversee the taxpayers dollars so that it isn’t wasted, but what they do every day is waste money by getting involved with things they have no business getting involved in.

August 25, 2016 1:51 PM

Dave Bearse

The GOP leadership thinks Obamacare is so poor it merited 60+ repeal votes.

That six years after enactment you’re citing HR2300, legislation so poor that GOP leadership doesn’t think it merits a Committee vote despite it being sponsored by a physician high within the ranks of House leadership, is all anyone needs to know about the quality of this “actual solution”.

August 25, 2016 10:26 AM

The Eiger

As I’ve said in my other posts, Republicans are a part of the problem as well. Just becasue some people in leadership are unwilling to solve hard problems doesn’t mean that HR 2300 is a bad solution. It means we have a lot of people in DC on both sides who would rather take the easy road and do nothing versus the hard, but right path of passing difficult legislation. It’s always easy to be against things, but extremely hard to stand for something and then push to get it through a Congress that would prefer to sit on its hands.

August 25, 2016 10:35 AM

Dave Bearse

You have my respect for calling the GOP out when you think it’s deserved. For my part I thought Clinton’s private e-mail server very poor personal and team judgment the day I learned of it. I suspect I may have a low opinion of the means by which personal wealth was acquired after leaving the WH broke when there is more information available.

August 25, 2016 9:23 PM

The Eiger

I’ll call out anyone who I think is deserving of being called out. I will also at least try to understand where the other side is coming from on an issue. This can be difficult. With that said I have zero patients for stupidity and blind party loyalty. I was embarrassed that my party opened our convention with a prayer asking God to help us defeat our enemy, the democrats. ISIS is killing people around the world, China is overstepping their territorial boundaries in the South China Sea, Putin is invading sovereign countries and we are praying to God that he defeat our enemy,the democrats. This outrageous.

The enemy of the GOP is stupidity and blind loyalty to a candidate who is a sinking ship for our party. I refuse to get on board. I got interested in politics becasue that’s where solutions were suppose to come from to help fix the problems we face as a state and country. Now it’s mostly the blind leading the blind becasue we are fighting across party lines at every step and flat out refusing to take a stand and push for difficult legislation becasue it’s hard. It’s much easier to throw stones and run the other way when someone asks you what you stand for.

The GOP use to be the party of ideas and solutions, but we have allowed ourselves to be taken over by the angry and bitter portion of our party. We are about to be a party that spends a coupe of decades in the political desert because we have gotten away from promoting ideas and solutions. We have decided it’s best to waste our prayers to God on defeating the democrats instead of asking him for guidance and direction. We are lost and need all the guidance and direction we can get. I just hope it isn’t too late.

August 26, 2016 9:36 AM

Saltycracker

There are great career opportunities in healthcare and demographics insures it will continue. But to maximize opportunity, keep an eye on your legislation. They more than ever want to control this industry by directing lobbied business and constrict competition at all levels. This drives up costs and taxes and more so if mandated coverage is avoided by expecting fewer providers and more taxpayers to suck it up.

When we demand they hyper control this industry the corporations and lobbyists will be there to see this happens. And it won’t be by making them compete for your business.